Artist Statement

The bacteria infected my bloodstream. It all happened so fast. It probably always feels like it happens so fast.

It was sepsis. I was in the isolation ward at the hospital. The doctors were at the end of the medication line, and they didn’t know what would stop it. It started with a spider bite. But infection spread, and I couldn’t move. The bacteria was doing its best to have the best of me. I fought it out, or maybe it fought with me. We are probably made up more of bacteria than we are of human cells anyways. Maybe it’s still in me, or mutations of cells are.

It’s not the events that stick, it’s the feeling. The feeling that the questions will always loom over unsatisfactory answers. The feeling that logic will never be able to move through the haze into any resolute. The truth that we only ever see the tip of the iceberg. The stories help to contextualize, to root, but once the memories fade and the narrative disintegrates, there is no choice, but to start over.

I start with a rock, potently compressed matter. I don’t know where it’s been or who has held it before me. I don’t know if it speaks in a form I don’t recognize. I think rock and glass can communicate. The glass bubbles as the rock holds the glass’ heat. The bigger the rock particles, the more the glass contorts. I encase found 300-year-old marble from Marble Cemetery in glass. The glass consumes the marble. Perhaps glass and marble have met before, galvanized by volcanic force. Perhaps, a narrative endures that has been buried under layers of sediment. I introduce glass to tree, to the oldest tree I know. Glass burns tree, paralyzing its remains. Maybe trees speak a language that humans have gone deaf to.

There may be no answers, nothing concrete to hold onto. But there are patterns; my charge is to distill the patterns.